Apropos of the shooting rampage in Tucson last Saturday: survival following a penetrating gunshot wound of the brain is indeed rare; that it should have occurred under such arresting circumstances and have victimized such a high-profile and sympathetic public figure endows it with the potential to begin civilizing our deeply divided and generally clueless species at a time when some rudimentary awareness of its increasingly desperate plight is long overdue. The question is really one of survival; the situation itself, and the logic behind it, are both relatively easy to grasp: despite our highly evolved and undeniably brilliant cognitive abilities, we humans are now embarked on the destruction of our own future because our emotions have been leading us into indefensibly stupid and destructive mass behavior.
Once Darwin’s intuition began leading biologists inexorably toward the conclusion that life is less likely to have been planned by a humanoid intelligence than to be random; an increasingly bitter contest between those able to accept cosmic uncertainty and those who cannot became started. Over time, It’s become obvious that disagreement is now so profound, yet inchoate, that it has acquired the potential to do great harm to both our species and our planetary environment.
These thoughts are an unexpected result of my continuing study of cannabinoids and the people who use them. I feel no need to defend it; instead I’m almost equally reassured about its validity by the consistency of the data and distressed by the implications of the (illogical) refusal of others with the same opportunity to do a similar study. Ditto, the relative lack of any coherent discussion of drug use as a phenomenon requiring understanding rather than punishment. Instead; the usual sources cling stubbornly to the glaring inconsistencies of a drug war dogma now invalidated to a grotesque degree and yet seemingly well beyond repudiation by either Congress or the Supreme Court.
The almost unbearable irony is that the shooting was done by a mentally ill person who symbolizes the inability of Medicine to either classify such problems in a meaningful way or shake its own drug war restrictions. Also that it took place in Arizona: a state that’s become both a Second Amendment focal point and the most glaring example of our failing federal immigration and “drug control” policies.
However, it’s said hope springs eternal; which is why I will continue calling attention to these follies as long as I’m able.
Doctor Tom
History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of man – Blue Oyster Cult.
Thank goodness, though, that hope does spring eternal.